On this year’s World Water Day, Mads Nipper puts the spotlight on some of the current water challenges, and looks into the coming Water Action Decade.

Today is one of the days where water is receiving the attention, it deserves. Today
is World Water Day, and while the theme for this year’s event is ‘Nature for Water’, it’s another part of today that catches my attention: the launch of the Water Action Decade. Ten, tangible years, where we can continue our efforts to meet the substantial water challenges, our world is facing.

The fight for water for all is not a fight for just one day. It’s a fight for today, tomorrow and every following day for the coming ten years and beyond. We must find a way to tackle the serious water issues, and ensure universal water access by 2030 as we set out to do with the Sustainable Development Goal 6.

For now, it seems that Day Zero is pushed a bit away, among other things because of resource rationing. But this also rests on the hope of rain coming in to replenish water resources. But even if a situation, where taps are turned off is avoided, we still face an issue as a global society: we need to find ways to ensure that this does not occur in Cape Town again or anywhere else.

We need the expertise from NGO’s to reach the poorest people in the world, and maybe the people who need water the most, for instance as the company, I represent, does in cooperation with among other Danish Church Aid in the large refugee camp Bidibidi in Uganda, where we together make water available for the people living here.

And we need to use the technologies ready at hand to make sure that water is not just available and affordable, but also drinkable.

In short, we need everyone to pull their weight to handle water. And we need to think about how to do it every day. Not just today. Not just for the coming decade. But until we have found sustainable solutions.